John Stossel on Teacher's Unions

Check out his latest on what he considers Education's worst nightmare--teacher's unions. A fair use excerpt:

Some teachers care about the students, so they want to do more than the contract requires. But astoundingly, some of them told me they are actually afraid to stay at school when the union says it's time to go home. They worry they'll "get in trouble with the union." It's as if the teachers, united, never to be defeated, made a decision: Instead of letting the administrators crack down on bad teachers, the union will protect the bad teachers by cracking down on the good ones.

Maybe that's what Weingarten calls policing their own profession.

I confronted Weingarten. "Unionized monopolies like yours fail. In this case, it is the children who -- who you are failing."

"We are not a unionized monopoly," she retorted. "And ultimately those folks who want to say this all the time, they don't really care about kids."

Really, Ms. Weingarten? You fight to protect a system that rewards mediocrity, and then you claim your critics don't care about kids?

I have argued that a hallmark of a recognized profession is a measure of self-policing and self-regulation--this is not what I meant.